“Ah, the beauty of your logic,” Villiers said amiably. “Really. I marvel at it.” He leaned closer. “I miss Harriet. She showed remarkable spirit for someone of her sex.”
“And rank.”
“Ah,” Villiers said, sitting back. “And therein we have the serpent in the Garden of Eden, do we?”
“You must admit there is some discrepancy in how she was presented to me.”
“I have never been one to overlook rank,” Villiers said, waving his hand. He wore a ruby on one finger.
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“And yet if I judge Harriet correctly, one could not say that she takes rank as seriously as do I—and oddly enough, as you appear to do.”
“I thought she was the widow of a country squire,” Jem said, scrubbing his face with his hands. He might as well tell Villiers. “I thought I’d be doing her a favor, by taking her out of a dreary country existence.”
Villiers laughed.
“Exactly,” Jem said. “More the fool I.”
“The duchy of Berrow is no small hamlet,” Villiers said.
“Berrow?” Jem’s head shot up. “Berrow?”
“What duchy did you think we were discussing?”
“I never asked.”
“There aren’t very many of us,” Villiers observed. His ruby ring seemed to wink at Jem.
“Her husband…”
“Benjamin.”
“He came to the Game once,” Jem said.
“You never invited him again,” Villiers guessed.
“No. He wasn’t really interested.”
“Benjamin was one of my dearest friends, though I didn’t understand that until after his death. One can make terrible mistakes when it comes to love, you know.”
Jem ground his teeth. The last thing he needed was a lecture from someone famous for spawning illegitimate children. “You are an unlikely font of such wisdom,” he said.
“I couldn’t agree more. I have never been in love with a woman, for example.”
Jem looked at him startled.
“No, nor yet a man,” Villiers said, shaking his head. “But I have loved. Here and there, here and there. I know the worth of the emotion.”
“I loved Sally,” Jem said.
But Villiers had known him for years, since those long-ago days, and he said nothing.
“All right, I didn’t love her in the same way. But Harriet is a duchess.”
“We established that.” Villiers pushed his small glass of claret toward Jem with one finger. “Here. I haven’t touched it.”
Jem looked at his own empty glass and picked up Villiers’s, cradling it in his hand. “She is a good woman. A decent woman. She said the Game would have to stop, and I’d have to follow her. But she has no idea. She knows nothing of my family.”
“Pesky things, families.”
“My reputation would ruin her. She’d come to hate me.”
“I suppose you are saying that I must give up the chance of falling in love as well?”
“Why would you?” Jem tossed back the claret.
“Oh, I do have some children out of wedlock, you know. Do you?”
“No.”
“What, only the daughter that you’ve tended so carefully? It shows a shockingly conservative turn of mind, Strange.”
Jem snorted.
“I suppose you are saying that due to my notorious lack of interest in my illegitimate offspring, and my accompanying reputation, that I must never fall in love?” Villiers’s question was delicately barbed.
“You don’t follow. I can’t—the Game…”
“Ah, the Game.” Villiers glanced around the room. It smelled of urine, thanks to Oke, and the air was redolent of cheroot smoke. “A charming tradition.”
“I’ve fixed the majority of my contracts here. I—”
“Of course, one can always use more substance,” Villiers said. “I wonder how my estates keep multiplying when I give them so little attention.”
Jem shot him a look of extreme dislike.
“I would guess that Harriet does not care for the Graces, and the other ladies of their ilk.” He raised a finger at a footman, who bounded forward and brought him another glass of claret.
“It’s not that she disdains them,” Jem said, taking another deep swallow of wine.
“She doesn’t want to breakfast with them? I must admit that Chloe’s laughter was making me tetchy earlier this evening. That story she told at dinner, about the bishop and the champagne bath. Hardly in good taste, don’t you think? Especially with those details—it was his miter she was talking about, wasn’t she?”
Jem took another swallow.
“No good woman has ever loved me,” Villiers said, putting down his glass with a little ring. “I was engaged, you know. Last year.”
“I heard.”
“Beautiful girl. She fell in love with the Earl of Gryffyn and dropped me. Do you know how I found out? Because she looked at him that way. There was a sort of look in her eyes.”
“What sort of look?”
He shrugged. “I see it now and then.”
Jem knew where Villiers had seen it. In Harriet’s eyes, when she looked at him. “I know Harriet loves me,” he said roughly. “But it would ruin her life, don’t you understand that?”
“And they always say that women are the more sacrificial sex,” Villiers said. “How touching all this recrimination is. I wish that Roberta had seen her way to such a sacrifice, but she went off and married Gryffyn anyway. I do believe they are most happy together.”
Jem grunted.
“I thought perhaps Miss Charlotte Tatlock might fall in love with me,” Villiers said. “She paid me visits while I was ill.”
“For God’s sake, you sound like a pitifiul case.”
“One thing about nearly dying is that you quite lose the wish to disguise your own weaknesses,” Villiers observed.
Jem silently thanked God he was feeling healthy.
“Miss Tatlock fell in love with my heir,” Villiers said.
“You’re cursed in love,” Jem said. “Next thing you’re going to tell me that you have your eye on Harriet.”
Villiers said nothing.
Jem felt a punishing heat rising in his chest. “You’re joking, right?” he said in a stifled voice.
“No one could not have his eye on Harriet,” Villiers said, looking back to Jem. “She’s utterly delicious, as you well know, especially in breeches. Do you know that she and I almost had an affaire once?”
Jem thought he might vomit. He shook his head.
“I approached her but she slapped me. She was married then, of course.”
“I thought you just said that Benjamin was one of your closest friends.”
“Annoying, isn’t it? I just seem to have the kind of constitution that simply can’t pay attention to the claims of friends. If you had a claim on Harriet, for instance, I would do my best. But of course,” he added gently, “you haven’t.”
Jem gave him a leaden-eyed look. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Your ham-handed attempts to manipulate me.”